Flash on the Beach (FOTB) ‘09 As promised, here is a link to my slides + lecture notes. It took longer than expected due to reasons: 1) it was my turn to sit next to the sick, coughing family on the flight back from London, where in turn I was sick for the better part of a week; and 2) I felt I needed to exploit the format of the slides by explicitly adding detailed notes to each one – a luxury that an hour presentation simply does not give you. Be forewarned, the notes are random thoughts and it is in a raw and early stage of research. The insights and conclusions I make might lead you in circles, or you might find a grain of truth that is worthy of further examination.
A YouTube Channel for Intelligent Video Art As I worked my way through several books on Cybernetic Art, Artificial Life Art and Genetic Art, I created a spreadsheet of the names, titles, urls, etc. of video art that continued to grow and grow and grow. I was able to include only a fraction of the video art within my presentation at FOTB, but I wanted to share the entire list with you.
To my amazement, a large number of quality, avant garde videos are available on YouTube. However, with the exception of the excellent MediaArtTube, most of the videos I found were not easily available, especially from an iPhone / iPod Touch. With that in mind, I would like to share with you a new YouTube channel: In The Mod: Video Art++.
The Vasulka Archives As much as it pains me to find out that a book I desire is out-of-print and unavailable, a void of greater size is created when the same is true for an important piece of video art. There were numerous times during my research for my presentation that I simply could not find relevant videos online. During a conversation I had with Simon from the Santa Fe Complex, he mentioned the Vasulka’s Archive. It turns out that from the late 60s the Vasulka’s have amassed an enormous collection of tapes, papers, videos, articles or magazines of avant garde related pieces for their archive. The archive consists of artwork from a variety of different artists who would donate their personal collection to the Vasulka’s for various reasons including the fact that they knew the Vasulka’s would take great care with their work.
We are fortunate to have Woody and Steina still with us and it is the perfect time to explore a relationship with a foundation to digitally archive this library so that it can easily be shared with future generations. With that said, if you know of someone with a track record of protecting artwork with the highest amount of integrity as well as funding such an endeavor, please let me know and I will forward their information on to the Vasulkas.
Hiatus
On a side note, I wanted to sincerely thank everyone who attended the conference as well as John and Joe for inviting me back for a 3rd year in a row. I feel at home when I’m in Brighton and I love seeing all of my friends again and celebrating this crazy, wonderful journey that we are on. John + Joe put together a conference that feels more like a functional family getting together to share with each other wonderful ideas. With that said, it is time for me to hibernate for at least a year from the conference circuit and focus my energy on creating artwork using the tools that I have created as well as hijacking existing features and functions from a worthy list of creative and mentally stimulating applications. I look forward to seeing you again at some point in the future, as much as I look forward to creating artwork that I would love to share with you.
Don’t miss the huge fundraising party for the Santa Fe Complex featuring FrankenCircuit, an enormous collaborative multimedia installation of kinetic, sound and light sculpture, and video projection all activated at the stroke of 9:00pm by a FrankenSwitch pulled by founder Stephen Guerin. Conceived by Philip Mantione and featuring work by Martin Back, James Brody, Tristan Chambers, Walter Gordy, Victoria Hughes, David McPherson, Simon Mehalek, Zevin Polzin, Frank Rolla, Alysse Stepanian, Steina and Woody Vasulka, and Dr. Woohoo. Plus music and spoken word performances by Vince Kadlubek, Flamingo Pink!, and Ismael Retzinski among others.
DATE: Saturday, June 13, 2009
TIME: Performances start at 7:00 pm / FrankenCircuit activation at 9:00 pm
COST: $25, $20 students/seniors
THIS IS A ONE NIGHT ONLY EVENT and TICKETS ARE LIMITED!!
PURCHASE TICKETS ON-LINE: http://FrankenCircuit.eventbrite.com
Santa Fe Complex
632 Agua Fria
Santa Fe, NM 87501
(enter from Romero Street)
Below are two unauthorized bootleg videos of my presentation at FITC where I’m connecting the dots between openFrameworks and Maya. If this piques your curiosity, the possibilities and experiments are evolving at a frantic pace and I will be presenting the latest at Flash on Tap May 30th @ 10am in Boston, MA, at FlashBelt June 8th @ 2:45pm in Minneapolis, MN and at Flash on the Beach, Brighton, UK September 21-23rd, 2009.
Dr. Woohoo will be at the Santa Fe Complex on Wednesday, May 6th at 11:30am for a show-n-tell session exploring how he – and you – can generate artwork by hacking into Illustrator, Photoshop and Maya via code. As the result of some early mash-ups within Illustrator, Woohoo was invited to work behind the scenes at Adobe, kicking the tires on a series of tools that simplified and enhanced the process of driving the Creative Suite from Flash based content. Based on this experience, Woohoo will explore how he connects the dots between ExtendScripts, Adobe AIR applications and Flash plug-ins to Illustrator and Photoshop in order to redefine what is creatively possible. In addition, inspired by the openFrameworks (OF) workshop he attended at Golan Levin’s Art and Code Symposium at Carnegie Mellon, Woohoo will also connect the dots between OF & Maya, along with a few other surprises.
Tutorials on how-to connect the dots between these toolkits and applications will be distributed to participants.
For a preview of Woohoo’s recent work, here are a couple of videos from his recent show-n-tell session(s) at FITC and here.
Dr. Woohoo has created several new installations for the Grassy Knoll Gallery in Portland, Oregon, as part of his upcoming exhibition that opens on April 2nd, from 6 - 9pm. In this video, Woohoo’s Agua Medusae jellyfish swarm together and their excitement is driven by the amplitude of the audio. The jellyfish are sometimes attracted to or repelled by the presence of visitors who attempt to come in contact with them. Using advanced computer vision techniques, swarm behaviors and audio/visual analysis created within openFrameworks v006 (a C++ library for creative coding), Woohoo creates an experience that attempts to look at the playful, beautiful and destructive interaction between people and our environment.
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The profit from a series of prints will be donated to the legal defense of Tavvi and Conner who were taken by force from their older sister in Portland and returned to their alleged abusive parents, who reportedly had drug habits. It’s a complicated story and you can find out more about it from here and here.
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